"He was dressed all in blue and gold, and he wore a gray cape lined with red, and oh, he looked like a picture in a fairy book, I can tell you, and he just stood there and stared at me. And he said, in a very low voice, 'I didn't dare to kiss you under the mistletoe.' And I wanted to say something, but couldn't think of anything because he wouldn't take his eyes away; and then Frau Müller came out and said 'Good-bye' to him with great formality. And afterward she said it was very _unziemlich_ to talk to a young officer alone in the hall, and, oh, I don't know--a whole lot of things I didn't listen to."
"And of course that only fanned your ardor and you continued to meet?" prompted Leonard.
He lighted a pipe and stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and never took his smiling eyes off Marjorie's thin little face, all animated in the dusk.
"Of course we met, but only on the avenue, when we girls were walking in a long line, dressed alike, two by two, guarded by dragons of teachers. But I'd lie awake every night and think of all kinds of things--his look, and the way his sword clanked against his boots. And twice I saw him at the opera, looking at me from one of the boxes filled with officers. You can't think how big I felt having him notice me--and you can't think how beautiful I thought he was. Little thrills ran up and down my spine every time I looked at him. Is that the way you felt when you looked at your silly actresses?"
"Maybe," said Leonard, grinning with the corner of his mouth unoccupied by the pipe, and staring out into the shadowy darkness. "Was that all?"
"Mostly," answered Marjorie, fingering the buttons on Leonard's sleeve. "Last time I saw him it was in the garden on the same bench in the sun. He came over the fence, and he told me that his regiment had been ordered to Berlin the next day."
"You knew more German then?" asked Leonard.
"Yes, I suppose so; but I didn't need to understand. It was all in the sun, and the air was all warm from the cut clovers, and his eyes were, oh, so blue! And--I don't know. He took off his helmet and put it on my head, and he took his sword out of the scabbard and he put it in my hand, and he said, oh, all kinds of things in German that I couldn't understand very well."